In the grand scheme of things, few businesses can say they have been truly unaffected by the coronavirus, with its affects impacting well beyond simply loss of work. However, just as we have had to simply ‘deal with it” personally from a risk perspective, businesses too have had to adapt from exploring remote working through to being more innovative than the next guy to secure work. Against this backdrop, marketing, and the tools it covers has also had to adapt and there is much we can all learn.
Perhaps the most obvious change has been the way we have all shifted our activity on-line, and the clever companies out there are not just making the most of the connected world but driving their marketing this way. Webinars podcasts and even virtual product launches have not just emerged, but have established themselves quickly as a preferred route by audiences, customers and the media.
Technology has helped of course, with Skype, Zoom and MS Teams being commonly used across all business settings, with their ease of use and low cost – free in most cases – facilitating meetings and encouraging ways of connecting with colleagues and customers.
As we slowly emerge from restrictions, wise businesses will continue to use these new tools, adding them to the marketing mix and giving their customers, existing and potential, the widest possible number of options in which to connect, converse and ‘do business’. The unexpected benefits these new marketing channels have delivered will continue too, such as time savings; reduced need for travel; reduced expense and lost productivity of staff out of the office simply travelling to and from meetings, and that’s without factoring in the environmental side of things.
There will always be a place for those face-to-face meetings, but rather than them being the norm, new technology has opened options to throw into the mix.
The future is uncertain, but we can learn from the very recent past – COVID-19 has forced new technology on the world of business, and it has and will change the way we work now and going forward. The wise business is one that sees these ‘forced’ changes as opportunities and looks to add and NOT replace existing communications and marketing channels.